This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[45]
When Joshua had thus purified the host, he led them against Ai:
and having by night laid an ambush round about the city, he attacked the
enemies as soon as it was day; but as they advanced boldly against the
Israelites, because of their former victory, he made them believe he retired,
and by that means drew them a great way from the city, they still supposing
that they were pursuing their enemies, and despised them, as though the
case had been the same with that in the former battle; after which Joshua
ordered his forces to turn about, and placed them against their front.
He then made the signals agreed upon to those that lay in ambush, and so
excited them to fight; so they ran suddenly into the city, the inhabitants
being upon the walls, nay, others of them being in perplexity, and coming
to see those that were without the gates. Accordingly, these men took the
city, and slew all that they met with; but Joshua forced those that came
against him to come to a close fight, and discomfited them, and made them
run away; and when they were driven towards the city, and thought it had
not been touched, as soon as they saw it was taken, and perceived it was
burnt, with their wives and children, they wandered about in the fields
in a scattered condition, and were no way able to defend themselves, because
they had none to support them. Now when this calamity was come upon the
men of Ai, there were a great number of children, and women, and servants,
and an immense quantity of other furniture. The Hebrews also took herds
of cattle, and a great deal of money, for this was a rich country. So when
Joshua came to Gilgal, he divided all these spoils among the soldiers.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.